Dear all, (01)
I was wondering whether the members of this forum have got any benefit
from linguistic philosophy in automated natural language processing,
and how? As many of you know, analytical philosophy has concentrated
largely on the structure of language since the early 20th century. A
clarifying dichotomy can be made into: (a) elements that are
necessarily present in the investigation of the concrete nature
(physics, biology, chemistry, etc.); (b) elements that are present in
the investigation of language, but not in type (a) investigation,
i.e., merely linguistic elements. While the identification of type (a)
elements may help the natural scientists, they don’t get a lot out of
type (b) elements. This drove me to ask: who in fact gets benefit from
the investigation of type (b) elements? Examples of type (b) elements
follow, with explanations of why they are insufficient in type (a)
investigation. (02)
(1) Class nominalism: the meaning of property P is that a particular
that has property P belongs to class P. That a red particular belongs
to class red really does not help the natural scientist in
understanding what redness means. However, the appeal of class
nominalism becomes less mysterious when it is understood that it is a
linguistics-driven theory. For instance, suppose that the following
algorithm is applied to all phrases in a book: place all words x in
phrases of the form “x is red” into class red. When we order the
computer to list all red objects, the computer lists all members of
the class red. This is useful in the linguistic sense, but
over-propagating the class approach is not practical, as Putnam
testifies: “Let us, then, keep our properties, while not in any way
despising the useful work performed for us by our classes!” (03)
(2) Ontology of properties that aims to get by with simple properties
that have no parts. That the property methane is simple, really does
not help the natural scientist in understanding what methane means:
all natural scientists accept that methane has proper parts. However,
when we ask the computer “Is there methane in the swamp?” answering
“yes” based on an automated internet query does not require any appeal
to the structure of methane molecules. (04)
And so forth. Philosophical papers don’t usually explicitly state that
they are involved with only linguistic philosophy. But understanding
whether the paper is about (a) or (b) clarifies things a lot. Then
again, type (b) investigation naturally should benefit someone, and it
should be possible to also explain how does it in fact contribute to
some science, directly or indirectly. If it contributes to automated
natural language processing, then maybe linguistic philosophy should
be moved into the department of general linguistics, where it competes
with the correct competitors. (05)
Any comments? Does anyone know how the contemporary linguistic
philosophy contributes to automated natural language understanding? (06)
Avril
Ystävällisin terveisin, (07)
Avril Styrman
avril.styrman@xxxxxxxxxxx
puh. +358 40 7000 589 (08)
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